59 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen KingThe Outsider
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 10: “Bienvenidos a Tejas”
Part 10, Chapters 1-8 Summary
July 26
Jack Hoskins arrives in Texas ahead of Ralph, Holly, Howie, Sablo, Samuels, and Alec. He wakes in his hotel room and realizes the thing from the shower is now under his bed. It tells Jack to go through to the Marysville Hole and to kill any of “meddlers” who turn up there.
Claude Bolton and his mother, Lovey, meet the investigators from Flint at the airfield. They all exchange stories about El Cuco and related creatures. Detective Sablo gets a call from the Dayton police, who are investigating the abandoned buildings near the cemetery where Heath Holmes is buried. Before Sablo can report what the police found, Lovey sends Claude out so they can talk safely; the outsider can read the minds of those it impersonates.
Jack Hoskins is already at the Marysville Hole. He has found a spot where he can lie in wait and watch the parking lot with a sniper rifle.
Part 10, Chapters 9-16 Summary
With Claude out of the way, the conspirators can talk freely. The investigators in Dayton searched the places near the graveyard that Holly had suggested. They found a pile of bloodied clothes, including Heath Holmes’s orderly’s jacket. Now they know that both Holmes’s and Terry’s doubles spent time in the vicinity of graveyards where the outsider’s targets’ families are buried.
Holly asks Lovey if Claude has family buried in the area. Lovey tells them that Claude’s uncle and two cousins died in the Marysville Hole cave system. The investigators make plans to drive up to the cave, track down the outsider, and kill it.
On the way back to the hotel, Ralph, Holly, Alec, Sablo, Samuels, and Howie stop at Home Depot, where Holly buys the components to make what her old partner Bill Hodges called a “happy slapper,” which is a sock filled with ball bearings. At the hotel, Howie raises the question of whether the outsider might have an accomplice—a “Renfield” to the outsider’s “Dracula.” Ralph dismisses the possibility as unlikely because serial killers are usually loners.
Later that night, Holly tells Ralph she needs him to believe in the outsider. She asks him if the idea of the outsider is really so much more inexplicable than someone like Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy. Finally, Ralph agrees that for the next 24 hours, he will believe that the outsider exists.
Part 10 Analysis
By alerting Claude to their arrival, the investigators have also alerted the outsider that they are on its track and that its efforts to scare them off have failed. As best the outsider can tell, they don’t yet know about the hole where it hides in its regenerative phase, but it can’t take chances, so it sends its servant, Jack, to guard the entrance.
Lovie Bolton is another example of King’s female characters, who often exert power without physical strength. She never takes part in the action, but the force of her character impels people to treat her with respect. Claude’s strength and gentleness make him a unique character, but his primary narrative role is to stay out of the way so that the outsider can’t read the investigators’ plans in his mind. With Claude as the third target, we see another pattern in the outsider’s behavior. It chooses targets who are more –than usually good.
Holly never clarifies to Ralph why she needs him to believe in the outsider, but she is perhaps worried that if Ralph confronts the outsider as he would a human, he might make some critical mistake that could get them all killed. Ironically, Ralph has already made a similar mistake. Howie, thinking of the outsider as a vampire-like entity, asked whether it might not acquire a servant. Ralph dismissed the idea based on what he knows about human serial killers.
Of course, even Holly compares the outsider to the kind of human serial killers Ralph knows about in order to make a point. Her argument is that Ralph can no more explain those human “monsters” than he can the outsider. It’s questionable whether Holly’s argument would really persuade Ralph. His difficulty isn’t in the outsider’s behavior. After all, Ralph was able to believe that Terry Maitland—a man he knew fairly well—was capable of what happened to Howie Peterson. The problem for him is the apparently supernatural nature of the monster.
Holly’s pleas and arguments are ultimately beside the point, as the damage has already been done: Ralph’s belief or disbelief will have no impact on the outcome. Later, Ralph will find that the outsider is as much a real and material entity as any human serial killer. Ralph’s failure isn’t so much in refusing to accept the supernatural but in refusing to accept an infinite universe in which anything might exist. He considers himself rational and scientifically minded, but he does not follow the science to its logical conclusion, perhaps because he prefers the comfort his “faith” in his own worldview provides.
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